Dr. Givings (Michael Cerveris, center) regularly treats female patients like Mrs. Daldry (Maria Dizzia) for "hysteria" by inducing a "paroxysm" — what we would call an orgasm nowadays. Once accomplished by hand, the job has been made easier at the outset of Sarah Ruhl's comedy In The Next Room by the invention of the electromechanical vibrator.
Joan Marcus
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Meng Jinghui is China's leading avant-garde theater director. His latest work, Murder in the Hanging Garden, is a musical — his first — and it addresses "the relentless grabbing for material goods and people's spiritual loss."
Louisa Lim/NPR
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Solo-performance pioneer Anna Deavere Smith set the standard for documentary theater in the 1990s; she's reached broader audiences with roles on TV's The West Wing and Nurse Jackie, and in films including Rachel Getting Married.
Mary Ellen Mark
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